Treats of the great good it did her not to turn from prayer completely and thereby lose her soul, and of what an excellent means prayer is for winning back what is lost. Urges all to this practice. Tells how it is so highly profitable and that even though one may abandon it again, there is a great value in giving some time to so great a good.
THOUGH I SEE CLEARLY that it will be to no one’s liking to see something so wretched, not without cause have I dwelt at such length on this period of my life. For I certainly wish that those who read this would abhor me when they see a soul so pertinacious and ungrateful toward Him who bestowed on her so many favors. And would that I had the permission to tell of the many times I failed God during this period by not seeking support from this strong pillar of prayer.
2. I voyaged on this tempestuous sea for almost twenty years with these fallings and risings and this evil—since I fell again—and in a life so beneath perfection that I paid almost no attention to venial sins. And mortal sins, although I feared them, I did not fear them as I should have since I did not turn away from the dangers. I should say that it is one of the most painful lives, I think, that one can imagine; for neither did I enjoy God nor did I find happiness in the world. When I was experiencing the enjoyments of the world, I felt sorrow when I recalled what I owed to God. When I was with God, my attachments to the world disturbed me. This is a war so troublesome that I don’t know how I was able to suffer it even a month, much less for so many years.
However, I see clearly the great mercy the Lord bestowed on me; for though I continued to associate with the world, I had the courage to practice prayer. I say courage, for I do not know what would require greater courage among all the things there are in the world than to betray the king and know that he knows it and yet never leave His presence. Though we are always in the presence of God, it seems to me the manner is different with those who practice prayer, for they are aware that He is looking at them. With others, it can happen that several days pass without their recalling that God sees them.
3. True, during these years there were many months, and I believe sometimes a year, that I kept from offending the Lord. And I put forth some effort, and at times a great deal of it, not to offend Him. Because all that I write is said with complete truthfulness, I shall treat of this effort now. But I remember little of these good days, and so they must have been few; and a lot about the bad ones. Few days passed without my devoting long periods to prayer, unless I was very sick or very busy. When I was sick, I felt better when with God. I tried to get persons who talked with me to practice prayer, and I besought the Lord for them. I frequently spoke of Him.
So, save for the year I mentioned, for more than eighteen of the twenty-eight years since I began prayer, I suffered this battle and conflict between friendship with God and friendship with the world. During the remaining years of which I have yet to speak, the cause of the war changed, although the war was not a small one. But since it was, in my opinion, for the service of God and with knowledge of the vanity that the world is, everything went smoothly, as I shall say afterward.
4. I have recounted all this at length, as I already mentioned,1 so that the mercy of God and my ingratitude might be seen; also, in order that one might understand the great good God does for a soul that willingly disposes itself for the practice of prayer, even though it is not as disposed as is necessary. I recount this also that one may understand how if the soul perseveres in prayer, in the midst of the sins, temptations, and failures of a thousand kinds that the devil places in its path, in the end, I hold as certain, the Lord will draw it forth to the harbor of salvation as—now it seems—He did for me. May it please His Majesty that I do not get lost again.
5. The good that one who practices prayer possesses has been written of by many saints and holy persons; I mean mental prayer—glory be to God for this good! If it were not for this good, even though I have little humility, I should not be so proud as to dare speak about mental prayer.
I can speak of what I have experience of. It is that in spite of any wrong they who practice prayer do, they must not abandon prayer since it is the means by which they can remedy the situation; and to remedy it without prayer would be much more difficult. May the devil not tempt them, the way he did me, to give up prayer out of humility. May those persons believe that God’s words cannot fail. For if we are truly repentant and resolve not to offend God, He will return to the former friendship and bestow the favors He previously did, and sometimes more if the repentance merits it.
Whoever has not begun the practice of prayer, I beg for the love of the Lord not to go without so great a good. There is nothing here to fear but only something to desire. Even if there be no great progress, or much effort in reaching such perfection as to deserve the favors and mercies God bestows on the more generous, at least a person will come to understand the road leading to heaven. And if one perseveres, I trust then in the mercy of God, who never fails to repay anyone who has taken Him for a friend. For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us. In order that love be true and the friendship endure, the wills of the friends must be in accord. The will of the Lord, it is already known, cannot be at fault; our will is vicious, sensual, and ungrateful. And if you do not yet love Him as He loves you because You have not reached the degree of conformity with His will, you will endure this pain of spending a long while with one who is so different from you when you see how much it benefits you to possess His friendship and how much He loves you.
6. O infinite goodness of my God, for it seems to me I see that such is the way You are and the way I am! O delight of angels, when I see this I desire to be completely consumed in loving You! How certainly You do suffer the one who suffers to be with You! Oh, what a good friend You make, my Lord! How You proceed by favoring and enduring. You wait for the others to adapt to Your nature, and in the meanwhile You put up with theirs! You take into account, my Lord, the times when they love You, and in one instant of repentance You forget their offenses.
I have seen this clearly myself. I do not know, my Creator, why it is that everyone does not strive to reach You through this special friendship, and why those who are wicked, who are not conformed to Your will, do not, in order that You make them good, allow You to be with them at least two hours each day, even though they may not be with You, but with a thousand disturbances from worldly cares and thoughts, as was the case with me. Through this effort they make to remain in such good company (for You see that in the beginning they cannot do more, nor afterward, sometimes), You, Lord, force the devils not to attack them, so that each day the devils’ strength against them lessens; and You give them the victory over the devils. Yes, for You do not kill—life of all lives!—any of those who trust in You and desire You for friend. But You sustain the life of the body with more health, and You give life to the soul.
7. I don’t understand what they fear who fear to begin the practice of mental prayer. I don’t know what they are afraid of. The devil is doing his task well of making the truth seem evil if through fears he prevents me from thinking of how I have offended God, and of the many things I owe Him, and of what leads to hell and what to glory, and of the great trials and sufferings the Lord endured for me.
This was my whole method of prayer, and the method was this one for as long as I walked in the midst of these dangers; these are the things I thought of when I was able. And very often, for some years, I was more anxious that the hour I had determined to spend in prayer be over than I was to remain there, and more anxious to listen for the striking of the clock than to attend to other good things. And I don’t know what heavy penance could have come to mind that frequently I would not have gladly undertaken rather than recollect myself in the practice of prayer. It is certain that so unbearable was the force used by the devil, or coming from my wretched habits, to prevent me from going to prayer, and so unbearable the sadness I felt on entering the oratory, that I had to muster up all my courage (and they say I have no small amount of that, and it is observed that God has given me more than women usually have, but I have made poor use of it) in order to force myself; and in the end the Lord helped me. After I had made this effort, I found myself left with greater quiet and delight than sometimes when I had the desire to pray.
8. Now, then, if the Lord put up with someone as miserable as myself for so long a time, and it seems clear that by this means all my evils were remedied, who, no matter how bad they may be, has reason to fear? For no matter how bad they may be, they will not be bad for as many years as I was after having received so many favors from the Lord. Who can lose confidence? For the Lord endured so much with me only because I desired and strove to have some place and time in order that He might be with me. And this I often did without eagerness but through my own great struggles or through the strength the Lord Himself gave me. For if those who do not serve Him but offend Him derive so much good from prayer and find it so necessary—and no one can truly discover any harm that prayer can do, the greatest harm being not to practice it—why do those who serve God and desire to serve Him abandon it? I, indeed, cannot understand why, unless it is that they want to undergo the trials of life with greater trial and close the door on God so that He may not make them happy. I certainly pity those who serve the Lord at their own cost, because for those who practice prayer the Lord Himself pays the cost since through their little labor He gives them delight so that with the help of this delight they might suffer the trials.
9. Because much will be said about these delights that the Lord gives to those who persevere in prayer, I shall not say anything here. I say only that prayer is the door to favors as great as those He granted me. If this door is closed, I don’t know how He will grant them. For even though He may desire to enter and take delight in a soul and favor it, there is no way of His doing this, for He wants it alone and clean and desirous of receiving His graces. If we place many stumbling blocks in His path and don’t do a thing to remove them, how will He be able to come to us? And we desire God to grant us great favors!
10. To make known His mercy and the great good it did me not to abandon prayer and reading. I shall speak here—since it is so important to understand these things—about the heavy battery the devil uses against a soul in order to win it over, and about the skill and mercy with which the Lord endeavors to bring it back to Himself, and about how to be on guard against the dangers I was not on guard against. Above all, for love of our Lord and for the great love with which He wins us back to Himself, I beg souls to watch out for the occasions. For we have nothing to rely on for our defense when we are placed in these occasions where there are so many enemies to war against us and so many weaknesses of our own.
11. Would that I knew how to depict the captivity my soul was in during this time. I understood clearly that I was in captivity, but I wasn’t able to understand why; nor was I able to believe completely that what my confessors did not consider serious was less wrong than I in my soul felt it was. One confessor told me when I went to him with a scruple that even if I were to have sublime contemplation such occasions and associations would not be harmful to me. This happened toward the end of this period when by the mercy of God I was withdrawing more from great dangers; but I hadn’t completely abandoned the occasions. Since my confessors saw my good desires and my devotion to prayer, they thought I was doing a great deal. But my soul understood that it was doing what it was obligated to do for Him to whom it owed so much. I consider it now a pity that so much happened and so little help was found anywhere, except in God, and that they gave it a great pretext for its pastimes and satisfactions by saying that these were licit.
12. The torment I felt in hearing sermons was not small. I was very fond of them, so fond that if I saw someone preach well and with spirit, I felt a special love for that person, without striving for the love myself, so that I didn’t know where it came from. Hardly ever did a sermon seem so bad to me that I didn’t listen to it eagerly, even though according to others who heard it the preaching was not good. When it was good, the sermon was for me a very special recreation. After I had begun the practice of prayer, speaking of God or hearing others speak of Him hardly ever tired me. On the one hand I found great comfort in sermons, while on the other I was tormented, for through them I understood that I wasn’t what I should have been—not by a far cry. I begged the Lord to help me. But I must have failed, as it appears to me now, because I did not put all my trust in His Majesty and lose completely the trust I had in myself. I searched for a remedy, I made attempts, but I didn’t understand that all is of little benefit if we do not take away completely the trust we have in ourselves and place it in God.
I wanted to live (for I well understood that I was not living but was struggling with a shadow of death), but I had no one to give me life, and I was unable to catch hold of it. He who had the power to give it to me was right in not helping me, for so often had He brought me back to Himself; and so often had I abandoned Him.